


like this is the worst i've done

by PenelopeJadewing



Series: fictober 2018 [12]
Category: Naruto, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Gen, He doesn't get paid enough for this, Itachi's just done, League of Villains, Recruitment, Shigaraki can't knock like a normal person, Suigetsu's a hacker, the league needs him for stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 17:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16412756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeJadewing/pseuds/PenelopeJadewing
Summary: This is all wrong… he came here to issue an ultimatum, an invitation into the League. They need eyes and ears and fingers in all the government’s pies, and a world-class hacker like Kijin is the best way to get that, but Tomura needs to be able to maintain control. This won’t do, Hozuki’s not supposed to have the upper hand…Or: Shigaraki doesn't know how to knock and Suigetsu is compromised.





	like this is the worst i've done

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooooo I am HECKA LATE. I got stuck on a prompt, plus I think I just drove myself into the ground and wasn’t letting myself rest between Fictober, art commissions, and personal projects. I took a few days break and then this one came a little bit easier. 
> 
> So... for the remaining prompts, I’m probably just gonna pick up with tomorrow’s prompt and finish out October. I’m pretty behind, and I’d rather get done as much as I can as opposed to bogging myself down trying to catch up. TuT
> 
> That said, here’s Day 19, belated!
> 
> \- P.J.

Getting past the doorman wasn’t a problem. Tomura suggested force, but he honestly should’ve known better than to think the likes of Uchiha Itachi would actually go for something like that. Instead, the moment they’d opened the door and the doorman looked up with a cheesy smile and a ‘Hello! How can I help you?’, his dumb face went slack and his eyes stared vacantly into space. Out of the corner of his eye, Tomura had caught the red of the Uchiha’s eyes before they dimmed back to black.

However, dealing with an incompetent everyday doorman is one thing. Recruiting a hacker? Something else entirely.

Tomura flexes his right hand as they climb the stairs, after they finished rummaging through the doorman’s records to find the right room number. They’re coming to the climax of this mini-quest now; he’s ready to bring his acquired skills to the table. It’s usually necessary, hassle though it may be. Normal people have a hard time grasping his vision and he’s come to accept that they usually need a bit of a push.

Then again, how normal can this guy be? He breaks his way through cyberspace for a living and he has yet to get caught, despite having been active for ten years now.

“What’s this guy’s name again?” he mutters to his dark-haired companion, a hint of a whine in his voice. He doesn’t like memorizing details… especially when he’s not sure it’s important yet.

Itachi responds with even patience. “Hozuki Suigetsu.”

“No, I mean, his public front.”

“Ah. Kijin.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t you find that a bit pretentious? ‘Fierce god’?” Tomura scratches at his chin absently. He doesn’t like pretentious people either.

“Hmm. Perhaps. But my moniker is ‘Izanami,’ so who am I to pronounce judgment for a pretentious title?” Itachi seems unfazed by this admission, his gaze remaining fixated ahead of them.

Tomura just grunts. That’s certainly a good point… but it means he can’t keep complaining about the guy they haven’t even met yet. Which is a bummer. He’s forced to entertain himself with actual observation.

The apartment building is decent, all things considered. It’s in a low-end part of town, but it’s not one of those places that gives you the creeps to be around. Nah, it’s just old. Poor. Or, on the bottom side of Middle Class. It seems clean for the most part, with some cracks in the white walls and the occasional dead bug or two left unnoticed on a window sill. It smells overwhelmingly like Febreeze. Aside from making Tomura’s nose itch, it’s not the worst place to be.

After living in an abandoned bar for so long, though, it could almost feel posh.

They come to the third floor and step onto hardwood hallway floor. The boards creak under their feet, making Tomura wrinkle his nose. How disappointing; stealth obviously isn’t in the cards today.

“Room 306,” Itachi says, striding off down the hall ahead of him. Tomura watches him go carefully. Sporting a hoodie, skinny jeans, and trainers, he looks like just another kid off the street… but he still walks like an experienced hunter. Each step is deliberately placed… and doesn’t make a sound. How does he even do that?

Tomura, knowing he won’t be so graceful, doesn’t even try. He walks lightly, but his feet still make a fair bit of noise.

They reach the door, which is a bland off-white just like every other door, tagged with black stick-on numbers. 306. Beyond this door waits their man.

Tomura lifts his hand toward the knob, until Itachi stops him with a light grip.

“What are you doing?” he mutters, frowning.

“What’s it look like?” Tomura snorts, “I’m going in.”

“Are you planning on destroying private property in the process?”

As a matter of fact, he is, and the fact that Itachi feels the need to ask makes him snort with something halfway between amusement and derision. “Oh please, like this is the worst I’ve done.” When Tomura moves to bring his itching fingers the rest of the way to the unsuspecting knob, though, the Uchiha’s hand tightens around his wrist. Subtly, but without hesitation… vaguely threatening.

It makes the oddest of chills race up his spine, with a flourish of adrenaline that’s not entirely unpleasant, as he slides a wide-eyed warning stare in his companion’s direction. He can’t help but wonder how a duel against this particular player would turn out…

He’ll get to find out if Itachi continues to undermine him.

Itachi doesn’t seem to notice the threat rolling off Tomura in waves—or, perhaps he does and he simply isn’t cowed. He meets Tomura’s cautionary gaze with one of his own, and quite suddenly, Tomura’s struck with the realization that, if they were indeed fighting, he would have already lost by willingly looking into those dangerous black eyes.

_D***._

“And if he says no?” Itachi asks, reminding Tomura that there’s actually a reason why they’re here.

He smirks. “He won’t.” Then he plunges his hand forward despite the grip and wraps all five fingers around the doorknob. In the seconds it takes Itachi to remove his restraining hand with a sigh of exasperation, the metal darkens and dents and rusts over until it’s crumbling away under his fingertips. Decay doesn’t stop there, spreading from the knob’s face plate to the aluminum door itself, which warps into itself until finally, as his Quirk reaches its hinges, it topples over inward and collapses into dust when it hits the ground, barely making a sound.

Tomura steps over the mass of door powder onto thin brown indoor/outdoor carpet. The apartment beyond the threshold is pathetically tiny. And deathly quiet.

Itachi steps in beside him and Tomura’s gaze falls down to his hands, which brandish one of his silenced Mark IV Tacticals in a stable grip that attests to his level of confidence with it. Personally, Tomura still finds crude weapons like firearms extremely outdated and impractical against the superior might of Quirks… but he has to concede that, in the loving hands of a professional, those things could put down a target in less than half the time it took Tomura to cross a room and capture them in his hands.

At the very least, if Itachi has to put a bullet in somebody today, Tomura can get rid of the body. How convenient; how has he never thought of this before…

Slowly, they proceed into the minuscule space. The space is the definition of Sad; the door opens to a main living space that also doubles as a bedroom. Beyond that, where the carpet transitions to old tile, a small kitchenette houses some meager appliances as well as a dining table for two. He doesn’t even see a bathroom anywhere; perhaps it’s on the other side of the wall…

There’s another, more important thing he doesn’t see though. Their target. Tomura meanders through the apartment, keeping on his toes, ready to be jumped, and yet nothing happens. There’s no sign this Hozuki guy is even home. After circling through the kitchen and coming back again to hover between the twin bed and the three-monitor computer system set up in the living room corner, he presses his chapped lips together to suppress a growing snarl.

“He’s not here…” he grumbles, nudging a bit of the door’s remains with his toe. “Why would he not be here?”

Itachi hasn’t moved from his place by the door, gun still aimed at the floor but ready to raise should the moment arise. His black eyes dart across the walls. “Perhaps he went out…”

Tomura looks around as well, trying to see if he missed something. There isn’t much to miss… except a pile of laundry on the computer chair.  _What the h***?_ “Tch… He’s a tech guy. Aren’t they always the types that only buy things online and never leave their rooms?” Tomura huffs. “Why would he leave?”

“Food?”

“Delivery.”

Itachi hums. “Online purchases leave a perfect footprint of your cyber presence. A lot of personal information is exchanged for payment and shipping purposes; I would imagine a wanted criminal would wish to avoid the chance for that information to fall into the wrong hands.”

“I mean, true,” says neither of them, “but don’t you think an expert hacker has ways to avoid being tagged?”

The voice floats just behind Tomura’s head. He raises his hands, Itachi raises his gun, and something nudges the space just behind Tomura’s ear. It almost feels like… a finger.

Is this guy  _poking_  him??

“I wouldn’t move, there, Double-O Seven, unless you want your friend’s brains plastered over the wall,” pipes up the voice again and even though Tomura knows he’s speaking to Itachi, he hesitates. Surely this guy can’t be this stupid; why would anyone just poke an intruder and then make a vague threat? Does he have a weapon? Tomura can’t see, he’s too far behind him. There must be a reason for the unwavering confidence in that voice, though, and seeing as he’s the one who’s unfortunately found himself at this guy’s mercy, he’s really in no hurry to find out.

Where did he come from though? That’s what Tomura would like to know. They searched the place, and there isn’t all that much to go through, so how could they miss him? Worse still, how could they simply  _not notice him sneaking up on them?_

The voice didn’t say Tomura couldn’t move. Still, he should be careful… He turns his eyes more than his head, and tries to catch a glimpse of their assailant.

From the corner of his eye, he makes out a head of white hair and a shark-toothed smirk. The guy has one hand raised and, fingers poised in imitation of a gun, keeps his index finger pointed close by Tomura’s ear.

And he’s naked.

Tomura jerks his attention away on instinct and instantly feels ridiculous for it. He’s a notorious villain who’s already taken down several Heroes, for crying out loud; he was groomed for his role by All for One himself. He flirts with Death for a living, has traded blows with  _All Might_. What consequence is a simple… wardrobe malfunction? _Or more like oversight. Seriously, what is wrong with this guy??_

“Rude,” the guy, who can be none other than their hacker, Hozuki, sighs wearily. “You guys ruined my door. My landlord’s gonna take that outta my rent… What do you have to say for yourselves?”

The way he postures makes Tomura go rigid with mounting exasperation. This is all wrong… he came here to issue an ultimatum, an invitation into the League. They need eyes and ears and fingers in all the government’s pies, and a world-class hacker like Kijin is the best way to get that, but Tomura needs to be able to maintain control. This won’t do, Hozuki’s not supposed to have the upper hand…

Which just means they need to throw him off.

So Tomura drops. He throws himself to the floor, catching himself carefully on his palms and straight away hears the telltale _‘click’_  of the Tactical firing off a round.

Hozuki sighs again. “Really? Come on.”

He… doesn’t sound like someone who just got shot. Scrambling back to his feet, Tomura swipes back with an open hand at the person behind him, trying to sweep his ankle and trigger some disintegration, and he feels his fingers slip through something cold and wet. Startled, he sucks in a breath and staggers away, toward his armed companion. He’s only just straightening up when Itachi shoves him right back over again and he sprawls over the ugly carpet. An incensed  _‘what the f***!?_ ’ plays on his tongue, until the doorframe splinters not thirty centimeters from his head.

“Ooh, nice dodge,” Hozuki grins away, just casually exposed on the other side of the room. It’s easier to take his appearance in now, from directly in front of them. Tomura focuses on his… upper half. White hair, bright purple eyes nestled in a surprisingly soft face that contrasts with his shark teeth, and a lean, pale frame… D***, he looks like a high schooler! Just how young is he? Can he really be a notorious hacker that’s been around for over a decade?

And his attack… he was so close, Tomura  _knows_  he hit him. What was that feeling? What happened? It felt like he’d run his hand through a massive pillar of solid  _water_ … and the guy looks completely fine. How had he avoided Decay??

He’ll have to figure that out later. The guy’s hand gun is out now, stretching toward them.

_An artillery Quirk?_

“Shoot him!” Tomura blurts. If it comes to a showdown of bullet speed, they only have seconds to spare. Did Itachi miss earlier!? He has a hard time believing that, but how else could—

“I can’t,” Itachi says, startlingly calm. “He’s liquid.”

“Liquid…?” Tomura turns a curious stare their hacker’s way, only to find that index finger pointed between his eyes. His hand jerks up on reflex. “Wait just a second! We’re hear to talk with you, a**hole.”

Hozuki raises a silver brow. “So you bust in my door?”

Glancing aside at the remains of the door, Tomura can’t help but think that maybe Itachi had a point before, if this is how things turned out. Judging by the dry look that the Uchiha is leveling him with, Itachi is thinking the same thing. Perhaps disintegrating the door of a potential ally was, indeed, not the best idea. Before Tomura can come up with a response to that, Itachi speaks up first.

“Apologies,” he offers. “If it’s any consolation, I told him not to.”

As if that’ll be enough. There’s no way—

Hozuki throws his head back and laughs. Laughs hard, like he just heard the funniest joke in the world. Come to think of it… they’re a company of an elite assassin, a kid with a disembodied hand in his pocket, and a naked hacker who happens to have some kind of liquefication Quirk. Considering their current circumstances, Itachi’s final word on the matter of the door sounds very much like some kind of anticlimactic punchline.

Doesn’t mean the moron has to actually laugh at it.

“I’m in,” Hozuki says suddenly, lowering his gun hand as he gets a hold of himself and flashes his sharp teeth twice as wide as before. “Even if you did just mess up my leg. Seriously, that’s a pretty gross Quirk…”

Without warning, the kid’s leg—which still looks fine, as far as Tomura’s concerned—completely liquefies, splashing to the carpet as, as Tomura had come to guess, pure water. Or… whatever decaying water becomes, since that has to be the limb Tomura hit. Unfortunately, Hozuki looks entirely unfazed by the loss, and with a disturbing churn and warp of watery flesh, the leg grows right back.

In response to his sudden acquiescence, Tomura sputters. “Bu—I—wait, that’s it?”

Hozuki shrugs. “Sure.”

“You were just about ready to blow my brains out with... whatever the h*** you were doing,” Tomura snarls. Itachi waves a hand at him while lowering his gun, and it’s enough to make Tomura rein in a bit, but definitely not enough to make him cut this weirdo some slack. “You don’t even know what we’re here for.”

Hozuki snorts, flapping a hand at him like he can just brush this away. “You serious? You are Shigaraki Tomura, right? As you said, I’m a  _tech guy_. The internet’s my world and in certain corners, I’m hearing nothing else but ‘the League of Villains this’ and ‘the League of Villains that.’ Did you _think_  you were being subtle? Why do you think I wanted to get the drop on you?”

So… he recognized them right away? How much did he know? Had he researched the USJ? Or was it because of Stain? And how did he vanish when they came in? Did he hide somehow using his Quirk and—the laundry. The laundry on the chair. Could this guy liquefy himself completely?? Turned into water in the carpet and reformed himself at Tomura’s back when he had an opening. And so fast…

“That… means that as soon as I said we wanted to talk, you figured the only other reason for us to come was—”

“Recruitment.” Hozuki looks terribly proud of himself at this conclusion, despite interrupting Tomura in the process of voicing it. “Gotta admit, I’m pretty flattered you all thought of me. Means I’m carrying the Kijin name pretty well.”

Tomura’s brow furrows deeper as even more questions crowd into his mind. It’s like the more this Hozuki guy says, the more questions he has. What does he mean by carrying the Kijin name? Is he a successor? How old is he? How long has he been hacking? What all has he found out about the League? Does he know their names? Their assets? Their hideouts? Why would he agree so suddenly and readily to this? Didn’t he think that maybe Tomura could be lying, they could actually be out to kill him and here he is, just—

“Gaaah…” Tomura rakes his hands through his hair, sans a single finger on each, hunching over when his brain gets too loud for proper thought. “Shut up! Okay… So you know we’re here to bring you in. And you’re okay with that, right? So let’s just… go someplace secure and get on with it. I have a lot of questions for you, Drippy.”

“Sure thing.” Hozuki just smirks away and it’s really beginning to annoy him. “I’ll answer any questions you have.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup.”

“Yeah, well, put some d*** pants on first.”


End file.
